Area of Ebola risk from animals bigger than thought

More than 22 million people live in parts of Africa where conditions exist for the Ebola virus to jump from animals to humans, a bigger area than previously thought, researchers said Monday. While the actual risk of animal-to-human or “zoonotic” transmission is low - there have been only 30 confirmed cases in the disease’s history - the wide geographic spread boosts the potential for future human outbreaks, disease specialists wrote in the journal eLife. People can in very rare cases contract the virus from touching or eating infected animals like bats, chimpanzees or gorillas, and then infect other people. Human-on-human transmission of the haemorrhagic fever-causing virus, which has a death rate of up to 90 percent, requires direct contact with the body fluids of an infected person or corpse.